THRIVING WHILE BLACK

A Black entrepreneur explores corporate racism in this business book.

As a self-made Black businessman and licensed clinical social worker, Williams is deeply familiar with the racism embedded in American corporate culture. In this work,he reveals “the psychological and emotional consequences of being Black in corporate America.” Despite surveys that highlight the many White businessmen who do not see their Black co-workers as “deserving” of their jobs and who maintain stereotypes of African Americans “as lazy and unwilling to work,” Williams convincingly demonstrates “the reality…that Black people need to work harder than their white counterparts to achieve the bare minimum.” Even when succeeding at their jobs, Black workers continue to be ignored, particularly in decision-making circles. At just under 100 pages, this succinct book covers topics that range from ethnocentric ideas of “professional” hairstyles to imposter syndrome and tokenism to microaggressions from White colleagues who “do not see color.” Code-switching is a central topic of the author’s analysis, which argues that racist attitudes in the corporate sector view African American Vernacular English as “an inferior dialect.” In general, United States business culture, according to Williams, seeks “to erase” Blackness by encouraging African American employees to conform to White cultural norms as a prerequisite to climb the corporate ladder. This prioritization of White values implicitly strips “the average Black person of their individuality and humanity.” The volume’s final chapters examine the psychological costs of “Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder” and call for true diversity in the business sector that celebrates differences rather than encourages a monolithic corporate culture whose default is White comfort. As U.S. corporations have increasingly included social justice messages in their advertising campaigns, Williams’ book is an important reminder of the entrenched systems within corporate America that work against Black employees even when the business publicly states a commitment to “diversity.” But while the volume provides a myriad of anecdotal and statistical evidence to bolster its claims, it lacks adequate citations. In addition, the work’s opening chapter on African American history is perfunctory and distracts from an otherwise important message on corporate racism.

A flawed but insightful exposé of structural racism in corporate culture.